UW misinformation researchers will not buckle under political attacks

Contrary to a recent headline in The Washington Post, no one I know in our field is “buckling” or backing down, writes Kate Starbird, director and co-founder of the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public. Photo by Daniel Kim, The Seattle Times

By Kate Starbird, Special to the Seattle Times

My University of Washington colleagues and I study online rumors, conspiracy theories, and disinformation.

In the past year, research like ours has come under fire — often by some of the same individuals and organizations that benefit from the spread of falsehoods.

While these attacks have, of course, been stressful, they also help us to improve how we communicate about our work in an increasingly adversarial space. Above all, contrary to a recent headline in The Washington Post, no one I know in our field is “buckling” or backing down.

We’ve been doing this research for more than a decade. We’ve studied the spread of online rumors around numerous events, including the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, and the recent Maui wildfires. Borrowing from methods in crisis informatics — a field that looks at social media use during crisis events — we often conduct “rapid research,” quickly analyzing and publicly communicating about social media dynamics during fast-moving events. MORE